The present invention relates generally to the field of web browsing, and more particularly to identifying and exposing fragment identifiers to users.
A web browser is a software application for retrieving, presenting, and navigating information resources on the World Wide Web. An information resource may be a web document, image, video, or other piece of content or collection of content. Information resources are described with a markup language, the most common of which is Hypertext Markup Language (HTML). A web browser interprets the markup language documents and converts the markup language document to visible and/or audible web pages.
Web browsers are able to identify an information resource by receiving a Uniform Resource Identifier (URI). A URI is a string of characters unique to a particular information resource. A user may wish to utilize a bookmark to access a specific information resource. In the context of web browsers, a bookmark is a URI that is stored for later retrieval in any of various storage formats. Many modern web browsers include a bookmark feature. Bookmarks are often referred to as “favorites” or “internet shortcuts” within a web browser.
Within an information resource's markup language document there may be short strings of characters called fragment identifiers that identify specific sections within the information resource. A fragment identifier may be appended to the information resource's URI by following the URI string with a hash mark (#), which is then followed by the fragment identifier string.